Contact Info

Contest Info

I love games! And so, I frequently hold listener contests, which some say are difficult but others say are fun. Ambiguity and the inevitable mess up by Grok make them an interesting exercise. All contests are funded by listeners, and donations can be sent to Farmer Joe (#672309). In the case of correct answers by multiple people, chatbot randomly rolls for a winner. My prizes usually consist of random food and booze items in Farmer Joe's inventory.

Current Contests:

Questions!

I ask you a question, and you answer it. Nothing could be easier. Although my questions can be tricky, or hard. Or make no sense. Or have very little information to go on. It's up to you to figure it out! Send your answers by kmail to GrokTheMad. I eliminate all the incorrect answers and only the winner(s) are left.

What's In The Can?

I put items in my tin can and shake them. Each song you get a guess. You have to guess the what the items are, the correct number of items, and possibly their descriptions (like color, type, etc). I go through the answers and tell you the wrong ones and the right ones until we get it all figured out! Each song we go through without a correct guess by anyone gets you a clue. If you correctly guess an item you win a small prize. At the end of the contest, you must correctly identify all the items in the can plus some descriptor. Wrong answers are eliminated, chatbot randomly rolls the for the winner. Grand Prize for this contest is kept in Farmer Joe's display case (#672309).

Game Show Night!

It has been a while, but this will come back. Soon. We play different game shows like Match Game, I've Got A Secret and Family Feud. Others are in the works as well. This is where we get together a conference bridge and a panel of guests will play either for or against the folks in chat for prizes!

STATUS UPDATE: This is currently on hiatus until I can figure out why my sound quality is so poor. Until I can bring you an acceptable listening experience, I will, unfortunately, need to put this on hold. I will be bringing you other contests though, so stay tuned!

STATUS UPDATE UPDATE Stay tuned, adventurers! I believe I have worked out my sound issues. I am going to be testing things and hope to have this up and running ... soonish. Game shows!!

STATUS UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE' *Sigh* I'm trying, although summer is making things difficult to stay at my comp. This will happen again, by hook or by crook, I promise you.

STATUS UPDATE UPDATE UP...Oh you get it Well, I found a gent in the Netherlands who has solved this problem in a very interesting way. It calls for a different setup than I currently have, and I may need to make a small purchase, but I will get this working by end of Oct 07. Or I will give away everything in my inventory. I am such a liar.

Win The Farm

Every so often, you can Win The Farm! Essentially, the winner of the trivia question gets 200 turns of Farmer Joe to farm wherever they like. The winner gets everything dropped, meat and items! Farmer Joe is ripe with various meat dropping and items dropping things, so he can do very well in most areas. One day, he'll get that ultra-rare, and that winner will be very happy indeed.

GrokTheDJ

Grok began as a DJ on Radio KOL in January of 2006. Although hired in November of 2005, a slot was not yet available in the schedule.

Grok's radio shows are collectively called Groxycore Radio. A particular radio show does not necessarily follow a theme. However, given that a show can contain many different genres of music in a short space of time, the segueway between songs is always important. The shows are usually family friendly, although from time to time things can happen which might cause parents to call out "earmuffs!" for the young chilluns.

Grok's loyal radio listeners are called Groxygenarians. They are distinguished as such by not identifying themselves as Groxygenarians in their player profiles or by any other method, including Grok naming them. They are, therefore, always present but never noticed. Like ninjas. Or tooth plaque.

Grok regularly runs challenging contests for his listeners. These include logic puzzles, trivia with a twist and "what's in the can". Grok also ran the "Great Martini Giveaway" giving away 46, 044 martinis to a number of players. Grok's Saturday shows are sometimes run as a game show with players skyping in to answer questions.

Origin of Grok's name

GrokTheMad's name is frequently questioned as coming from Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land. In actuality, it came from needing a name with which to register a character for playing the Kingdom Of Loathing. And being as Grok has only four letters, was easy to pull from an addled brain, easy to type and remember for a lazy, lazy person, it stuck.

The Mad was added later, after wanting a distinguishing feature with which to identify the character, and debating amongst several now forgotten choices. This took about a second and a half of real time.

Grok's Personal Info

Brief History Of Grok

Grok was a semi-professional singer for 10 years, touring the world with two seperate singing troupes. He's got a background in drama, doing dramatic theatre, opera and many, many musicals. His official degree is a triple major in English, Communcations and Social Sciences (oddly enough, called a B.S.) He's a hobbyist writer, having "won" NaNoWriMo several years (but currently on hiatus). His writing works and poetry have appeared in both print (newspapers and books) as well as online (but does that count?)

Grok grew up in Tucson, Arizona, went to high school there and did two years in college at Northern Arizona Univeristy, when they were still the Lumberjacks. Go Jacks! He studied in the Musical Theatre program there, and eventually won the distinction of a nomination for an Irene Ryan award for a minor role in Sondheims's "A Little Night Music."

Finishing up his college at Eastern Michigan University, Grok also had a chance to audition for a spot at the North Carolina School Of The Arts for both Set Design & Stage Management and Acting. However, as the realization settled on him that he did not want to live and work in New York, he gave up that dream and now is happy to play supporting roles and do stage work behind the scenes for his local community theatre.

AT EMU Grok did a DJ stint for 2 years on the local radio station. His future wife also worked on the show as "Chief Engineer" although she never spoke, being the shy type. She could switch carts and discs like a madwoman though. Mrs. Grok still refuses to speak when broadcasting, although her laugh may have been heard once or twice on air.

Current

Hobbies

Grok is a tabletop gamer, playing and running RPG's for many years. Games include: Dungeons and Dragons (original and D20), Champions! (but not FRed, sadly), Mutants and Masterminds, Star Wars, Fudge (various), Legend Of The 5 Rings, 7th Sea, Vampire, Werewolf, Amber Diceless, Deadlands (once), and some crappy home grown stuff. Grok has also LARP'ed quite a bit, and was in a steady monthly outdoor fantasy LARP for 2 years (lightning bolt! lightning bolt!).

Currently between games, although looking to start something up right quick with his bonehead gaming group. Grok loves games of all types, especially card/board games and has attended many gaming Cons (the last one being GenCon 2002). He owns a modded Xbox (31337 mod, software only, bitches, so no Live banz0rz for me!) as well as a PS2 and several handheld Nintendo units. The Xbox 360 has now landed. Look for me on Live as QuickFade. My current obsessions include Rainbow Six: Las Vegas, Viva Pinata and Enchanted Arms.

Grok is a a technology geek, having many computers in various states of disarray. He's proficient with several OSes, loves *NIX, programs in Perl whenever possible and thinks MySQL rulez.

Grok loves to camp outdoors, and the outdoors in general, which is somewhat conflicting with the computer geekiness which more or less requires indoors and electricity. But he makes it work the best he can.

Grok also loves to travel, alone and with family. He's been to 49 of the 50 states (Alaska, she-bitch temptress that she is, shall soon be his) 5 different countries and 2 continents. He's been to the tropics of Hawai'i and The Bahamaian Islands.

Real Life

Grok is an IT manager who works with technology all day, and lurves it and hates it simultaneously. Grok works for an international cement supplier running a data center and being an admin for a Linux farm of 200+ servers. Oh yeah, SAP and Lotus Notes both SUCK.

Distinguishing Features

Grok was the last hire of outgoing Hiring Director, Faustus Pringle. Faustus is still apologizing to station management as of this writing.

Grok's musical collection is best described as ecclectic. Other words that have been used to describe it are crappy, reprehensible, second-rate, valueless and omgwtfbbq.

Grok will never play anything by ICP or Barbara Streisand, and will kill any bastard out there who mashes them up. This rule has been violated for ICP, but never never ever ever ever EVER for Babs. Ever. Never ever.